


Lying to Oneself is Not a Healthy Coping Mechanism

by I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning, yulerule



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Bond Horror, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Incapacitating Mental Pain, Insanity, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Unsettling Ending, Very Brief Suicide Ideation, Visceral Grief, hopelessness, self-delusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 05:09:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14229975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/pseuds/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yulerule/pseuds/yulerule
Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi is devastated in the wake of Mustafar. Sometimes... sometimes the truth is a hell all its own.





	Lying to Oneself is Not a Healthy Coping Mechanism

**Author's Note:**

> Yulerule:  
> This is basically my idea, my plotbunny, my headcannons, that I_Gave_You _Fair_Warning wrote out in fic form. It's my first thing to be published, ever. (Even though the words are all Fair Warning's )
> 
> Fair Warning:  
> Thanks to yulerule and her patience with my health situation as I worked on putting her idea into words.

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi knew what it was to watch your other half die before your eyes.

When Yoda warned him against the security recordings, it was that agony Obi-Wan expected to face. To see Anakin go down with a saber in his heart, pain and shock in his eyes, dying with the rest of Obi-Wan's family.

He knew Yoda to be right, knew it would haunt him the rest of his life, but he _had_ to see his brother's final moments.

Anakin had died alone, because his other half hadn't been there.

He would be there _now._

He began the security footage.

This... this was not that.

Dear Force above, it wasn't that.

Something within Obi-Wan reeled and tore, and for a moment he thought he might have blood running from his nose.

He didn't.

But neither did the Force have mercy.

Instead, Obi-Wan stood there and discovered that there were things worse than death.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan didn't dare reach into the Force as he fled from the Lars homestead to the abandoned house he'd chosen.

An echoing thump pounded in his skull, an anguish that had begun in the Temple and become overpowering on Mustafar.

If he opened himself to the Force...

The psychic feedback of the anguished loss of everything he ever loved would rage through his soul. It might...

_It might even kill me._

Obi-Wan was never meant to be alone.

Even before Anakin had flurried into his life, Obi-Wan had been surrounded by voices in the Force. A gentle song of life, something that cradled his own mind and fed it.

Now the Force echoed with the ripping screams of the afterimages of countless thousands of deaths.

That alone would bring him to his knees, once he allowed himself to really _hear_ it.

Still, he might have endured it, might have survived it, if his bond with Anakin remained. One tiny anchor of self, somewhere to shelter through the anguished nights the future years would bring.

Instead, there would be an emptiness. Like a bone torn from his arm, something he _needed,_ gone and with nothing to replace it. An agony that would never heal. An emptiness in his brain, where the bond had made room for itself, and had been ripped out.

He would crawl the rest of his days crippled, bleeding within and alone.

Alone, alone, alone.

He'd survived Qui-Gon's death only because of the quiet support of his family, and his newborn bond with Anakin.

And now, where there was one yawning gulf of destruction...

There would be two, coming at him from both sides, swallowing everything until nothing but hell remained.

A quiet breath of pain escaped Obi-Wan's lips before he slid off the eopie and unsaddled her.

At last he stumbled into the house, locked the door, and sank to lie curled up on the floor.

Obi-Wan braced himself, knowing he could not hide forever. He had to face it.

Take the pain, and either live to see morning, or convulse as his psyche shattered.

On the bright side, there would be no one to miss him. No one to mourn. No one to be hurt, should he not prove strong enough.

Obi-Wan squeezed his eyes shut and let the Force back in.

 

* * *

 

He screamed.

He knew he did, even if he couldn't hear it. He could feel it, ripping his throat, tearing away his voice.

He writhed.

He knew, because bruises blossomed on his palms, his arms, his legs from where he struck the floorboards and table leg. Because a pathetic smudge of blood traced where a scrape cut too deep.

He sobbed.

He knew, because the sand beneath his cheek was damp, because he couldn't breathe through the snot in his sinuses, and his eyes burned, burned, burned like Anakin had burned on Mustafar—

He suffered for a lifetime, an eternity stuffed into hours, and another eternity lay ahead. No one would come to save him, there was no release to be found from the torment.

The nightmare would never end. He could see that now.

Had there been a knife close to hand he might have tried to sink it into his heart, simply to escape, Force _have mercy—_

There was a haven ahead.

Obi-Wan's mind struggled to reach it, and when he laid hands on it, he experienced such a visceral reduction in his pain that he nearly blacked out.

He clung to the rock in the storm, as the waves beat against him and threatened to drag him away to finish drowning.

He dragged in a lungful of air, cowering, freezing and burning, the Force's hurricane of death too strong to resist.

The only fixed point in a churning sea of bitter waters, he draped himself a little more firmly over it, knowing the next tidal wave that hit might sweep him away again if he didn't hold with everything he had, his last fingernail.

Hours passed before he realized what it was that he clung so desperately to in order to stave off insanity's claws.

His bond to Anakin Skywalker.

Obi-Wan retched against the floor, found himself unable to move away from the filth, too weakened to move physical body or his mind's own form.

A dead Anakin would have left a gaping hole in Obi-Wan's Force, like the sucking vortex that Qui-Gon's wrenched-out presence left in Obi-Wan.

This bond, the only ease of the unbelievably vicious pain...

Meant that the _creature_ he'd tried to kill had _lived—_

It was one stone piled too heavy onto the weight crushing Obi-Wan's soul.

Was it any wonder consciousness fled?

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan awoke to find himself lying in filth.

Blood, sand, vomit, urine, snot, tears.

He had no strength to grieve so violently anymore.

He could barely lift his head.

Pain laced through every muscle and bone in his body, and he recognized the symptoms of severe dehydration within himself.

If he didn't consume fluids— and quickly— he would likely pass out again, with death to follow.

If he hurt this much _now,_ it would undoubtedly ratchet worse the instant he tried to move. Where was the _point,_ in the middle of so much pain?

He was supposed to get up. He knew that in a dim, distant way.

But he'd been supposed to kill Vader too, and look how that had turned out.

He could fail one more time. Just try to sleep a bit.

His eyes drifted shut again, trying to block out the anguish of soul that equaled his battered body.

 _No,_ he realized. He had to move.

Gritting his teeth, clenching his eyelids shut, his mind clutching the one place that _didn't_ hurt in the ruined desolation of his mind, he dragged himself to his knees.

He nearly passed out from the pain and dizziness, so he paused a moment, head hanging, soul bleeding.

And then he stood.

 _Because that's what I do,_ he thought, almost sneering at the bitter amusement of the thought. Struck down again and again, always staggering up to face yet another beating.

He put fluids into his body. Managed to somewhat clean himself and the floor.

Physically worked towards surviving long-term on Tatooine.

He kept moving, though he felt as if he drifted in a fog for most of it.

 

* * *

 

“Don't you think so, Ana—”

Obi-Wan froze.

Third time in the space of a week.

This hadn't happened in the first couple of months of his stay on Tatooine, turning and expecting Anakin to be there. To laugh at a dry statement, or to offer commentary, or simply to argue with him.

Obi-Wan set down the hydrospanner, leaning his head against the overheated metal of the vaporator.

Seven months since Mustafar, and still, oh _Force,_ the pain—

 _He's dead,_ he whispered within, trying to measure his breathing and keep the world from spinning, that agony within his soul from swallowing him whole. _He is gone._

Obi-Wan clutched at his rock in the storm within his soul, silently begging for the pain to pass, as it always did. It would leave him after a bit, allow him to be functional for a time before it struck again.

He knew the words to be false, but he had a limited supply of comfort, and no one to croon softly to him but himself.

He could either tell himself his brother was safe, was uncorrupted, was the man he'd admired and bound himself to and loved—

Or he could tell himself... _what_?

He loved _still,_ he loved so fiercely, so much it _hurt,_ he _missed Anakin,_ he needed to be near him, to hear his voice again, to sense him there, by his side—

The lure was so powerful, so magnetic it nearly dragged him out of his house to go locate... _Vader..._

To turn himself in simply so he could ease the excruciating torment of his own mind separated from Anakin.

_No. Anakin is not there. He is dead._

_My brother did_ not _slaughter children. He did not. Vader is all that's left, he's murdered my Anakin._

Obi-Wan lifted his head— it felt like it weighed more than the rest of him combined— and tried to force his eyes to focus on the vaporator once more.

At some point, the pain would just kill him, wouldn't it? It didn't seem to be fading with time, and there was only so much a mortal man could endure before it simply slew him.

There had to be an end in sight. Somewhere.

No tear fell from Obi-Wan's eye.

Those...

Those seemed all dried up.

Or burned away.

 

* * *

 

Six years passed.

Obi-Wan crept through each day, exhausted and worn. If it hadn't been for Luke's size changing, Obi-Wan might not have realized it was _years_ passing.

Every day felt alike, the same struggle for survival, within, without.

Yoda had said in those shocky hours just after... _after,_ that Qui-Gon had spoken to him. That Qui-Gon _wanted_ to speak to Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan had seen no sign of him. Heard nothing.

Had stopped expecting it to ever happen.

_He's probably disgusted with me._

Obi-Wan sure was. He hadn't noticed it at first, but recently he'd been soaking up every bit of news down in Anchorhead, Tosche Station, Mos Eisley— _anywhere—_ about Anakin. Craving it.

It was always accompanied with vicious slaughter, cruelties beyond count—

But Obi-Wan found his focus blurring over the victims, and instead seeking out _him._

Anakin.

He'd... almost stopped seeing the evil deeds, the blood flying up to stain the black armor.

And once Obi-Wan realized it, he recoiled and hid away in his home.

Not even the thought of checking in on Luke could lure him from his hiding place.

He hadn't forgiven him, he _hated the monster—_

But in his ache to love and be loved, something was _happening to him._

And he knew what it was.

A Force sensitive, too long alone, under too much duress, to much constant Force agony...

_My mind is warping to survive._

His own brain was betraying him.

He shivered in fear in a corner of his locked home, tears slipping silently down his cheeks.

He didn't _want_ to love this thing that had stolen _everything_ from him.

 _What happens when I completely lose it?_ It was becoming harder to see the mask. Instead, his brain supplied golden-brown curls and blue eyes that weren't there—

He couldn't fight anymore.

_Master..._

He'd fought, he'd endured, he'd _lived_ for years past the day he'd first _truly_ craved an end.

And he just couldn't give any more.

He retreated to the warm, glowing rock, that only place where the pain dulled even a little, and wrapped himself around it, desperate to leave behind the endless pain.

Perhaps he knew he would never leave it again.

He certainly couldn't have been _entirely_ unaware of what the next step he took meant.

But he'd held the line with no backup, no relief, and with no future in sight.

Push any creature too far, and their only focus becomes survival, all hope and _life_ beaten from them until only clinging to breath remained.

Obi-Wan Kenobi sought survival.

Survival meant escaping his confusion. If Vader some day arrived and Obi-Wan flew to meet him with open arms...

_Anakin, my dear sweet Anakin, is dead. My Padawan is dead. His spirit is beautiful, clear, cradled in the Force. Waiting for me. He's with me here, he loves me, I love him, he died protecting younglings, he died for what he believed in._

_Vader is a monster. Vader slaughtered my Anakin, took everything from us all._

_Left me to live._

_Anakin Skywalker is dead._

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi, expression calm, busied himself with making a cup of tea.

Qui-Gon Jinn stood beside him, mourning over the deep etchings pain left on his face.

Eight years had passed since Obi-Wan lost all hope.

Fifteen long years in a desert.

He functioned, but only because his entire mind and heart were wrapped so tightly around the bond. To even flinch away was to return the agony that left him completely unable to function.

And Obi-Wan had a Luke to watch over and tea to prepare.

Things to do.

The twisted horror of the Force around him was gone, leaving a silent appearance of normality.

Qui-Gon had just about given up all hope of Obi-Wan ever seeing him.

_But he will not be alone. He may not know it, but I will not leave him._

Obi-Wan sat at his little table and sipped his tea, as if it were the most important thing in all the universe.

And in this moment, to the fragmented soul sitting there...

It _was._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yulerule:  
> Hello. This is my first plot bunny to be published, ever. It bit me so hard, I cried (literally). The day I came up with this idea, I kept crying as I was thinking about it. Since Fair Warning's stories also made me cry a lot, and this story was sorta similar to stuff she wrote, I contacted her, and asked her to write out my ideas. (I'm not that great at writing stuff) Anyway, I can come up with ideas, but then I stall, and can't develop them any further. So if anybody has any ideas where this can go, offer them in the comments, I'd be interested in hearing them!


End file.
